Best Method To Backup And Access 28tb Of Data On Usb Hardrives And Internal Drives ?

Hi,
usb HDD are mounting up with prime data, totalling 21Tb, drives purchased over time and earliest is 2011.
having had a new one fail me after 2 weeks its time I backed them up with something more dependable.

I also have some 3.5 inc in caddys, 3Tb in total

then my WD 7200rpm internals :-

D/E are 1677Gb and 1118 on a 2794Gb drive

F/H/I/J are 39/586/586/652 on a 1862.9 Gb drive

as I bought two 4Tb drives I guess the partitioning has mopped up a bit.

GRAND TOTAL OF 28Tb.

I have the internals backed up to same size drives etc. Though I have not found a software that did the job so that source and destination has the same number of files., so backup has lapsed !

Just what hardware is there to back up this lot ?
a friend writes to bluray but thats photos, my data can see changes so needs a different method...and I dont have lots of money to spare, but cannot afford to lose a lifetimes work, and I keep ading tho this, photos as raw files are 20Mb each, videos are a few Gb each.
4K is even worse.
mesh files I am about to get into with CAD are also space hungry.

yet all we have are unreliable usb HDD or mega expensive SSD.

friend mentioned Seagate backup 250Tb , all I see are 250GB !

If I use cloud I am then sucked into paying ££££ per year, and if I stop thats all that payment wasted and data lost. I need something better than having to keep unplugging and plugging in some of my usb HDD to access data, and read write has to be FAST. Others are storing videos for when I wish to view them.

I use AbeMeda to tell me what is on which drive, then have to plug it in. Most times they sit idle, though I have 3 x usb HDD plugged in all the time, one is always the latest being written to for videos etc, I think thats not good practice as they are spinning all the time. Should perhaps keep the current new one in whilst filling it up.

DBenz

 

That's a lot of data. Maybe something like this.

But note a good, robust backup plan involves multiple backup devices, preferably with at least one being off-site in case your house burns down, is blown away or robbed.

 

Yep, a QNAP or Synology NAS, if you have the ability you can build your own with something like FreeNAS, something with a RAID for backup in case of drive failure.
If your data is that important to you, you'll make the investment in NAS drives. This in not cheap BTW. You're looking at 8 - 4TB drives to get 28TB in a RAID 5, that is tolerant of one drive failure.
Eight drives at around $100 each, plus any hardware to build it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

You really should not use USB drives as backup, they do have a limited number of write cycles.

 

Hi,
many thanks for the suggestions.

eeek I have 17 or so usb external Hard drives , as mentioned, so I presume you refer to these, all WD my passport or my elements, and a couple of seagates, , but do you mean usb sticks when saying usb drives, as mine are not sticks, all have as far as I can tell rotating hardware inside, so must be this :- ?

Zero experience so would get my PC support pit crew to handle that. Would that be cheaper than the item in the amazon link ?
Link showed a ReadyNAS 628X 2x10GbE 8 bay and also said diskless highlighted in beige (i.e. user populates it with HDD), which seems to show the item in the image, I counted 8 apparent bays.
Then it says up to 80Tb storage , so that must be if installing 8 x 10Tb drives, can one get 10Tb, are they dependable as I was told 1Tb is, and less the greater the size you go to. Then 130Tb with an EDA500 expansion chassis. I google that and it looks like the first one but with different frontage. Trying to get my head around this. Video shows socket top right on back for esata cable so I presume that goes into a socket on the 628x to connect the two.
Do these run quiet as I have a PC full of QuietPC items as all PC must be quiet. Could I place it in another room otherwise and I am told of wireless connection, though its slower speed, or does it have to use a cable and how long can that be ?
In summer my tower unit pumps out so much heat, it comes out back, bounces off wall and plays on my face all day, its 32deg C at midnight by it and just kills me in the heatwaves, even a 23C day is 28 in here. These NAS have to run all the time do they, as my usb HDD sit dormant until I plug one in and don't eminate heat or sound.

All I have is an outdoor shed single brick wall with green tints in places on white painted interior, so a bit of damp ! It needs re-pointing, a job for summer. and has electrical panel trip box on wall, its a workbench with spray booth etc , vice and grindstone. I could get a shelf made under the bench perhaps, not a clean environment. There is a glazed extension to house that might be the last place to go up in flames, but gets VERY HOT in summer and is regulated at 8C in winter. A friend writes to bluray his photos, and stores such in the garden shed. Would take many discs to do 28Tb. My data is both final and awaiting processing.

Cheers
DBenz

 

No, not true. As noted in the quoted text after that, they were referring to USB "flash" drives. There is nothing to suggest USB "hard" drives have a shortened life expectancy.

By "off-site", I mean keeping a copy at a trusted friend's or relative's house. Or a copy in "the cloud". Or what I do, in a safe deposit box at my bank. A shed out back is probably not a good place. I would be more concerned with humidity, dust and critters than temperatures. Most storage devices can tolerate temperature extremes just fine while being stored. You would just have to ensure the storage devices were given several hours (or overnight) in a normal "room temperature" environment to become acclimated first, before attempting to use them.

I probably no longer am justified, but I still don't trust the cloud. I am certain they will not lose my data. No doubt there soon be more copies than I can count. I'm just not certain I can trust the cloud storage providers can keep the bad guys out of it. Still, I am not justified because if I put anything out there, it certainly would be encrypted.

I do use the cloud for sharing things like family photos - just not for my really important files like tax and my business client information files.

 

Nope, there are various things that affect storage size in a NAS, formats, RAID. Even in Windows you'll never get 10TB on a 10TB drive. I have an 8TB, but windows formatted it sees 7.27TB, 4TB is 3.63TB and so on.
*Raw Storage: 80.0 TB / 80000.0 GB
*Usable Storage: 63.7 TB / 65192.6 GB
RAID5 uses one disk for Parity and requires at least three drives to be used.

 

Not sure what question you are saying "nope" to. But it has nothing to do with Windows. Whatever file system you use (NTFS, FAT32, etc.) a portion of the drive's capacity will always be used by the file and partition tables - essential to keep track of where the data is stored, cluster size, bad sectors, free sectors, etc.

 

No - to his 8 x 10 TB= 80TB. What I said was a true statement "Even in Windows" you'll never see the *RAW* size of the disk as storage space. I could have said in any OS you'll never see the raw size of the drive, which kinda did.

 

I didn't say it wasn't true. I said it has nothing to do with the fact one is using Windows.

Windows is just reporting what the file system is telling it. And the file system is on the disk. If you put that same drive into a machine that uses a different operating system, the same amount of available space will be reported and it will always be less than the *RAW* space on the drive.

So again, I am not disagreeing, just clarifying for those reading who might be confused.

I had it explained to me one time using a totally empty store room as an example. If the room is 10' x 10' x 8', the room has 800 cubic feet of *RAW* space. But you can't just throw in 8oo cubic feet of stuff. You have to put in shelves, leave clearance space for the ceiling lights, a window, the door into the room. And you need walk space between the shelves. All that takes up space before you bring in your first item for storage.

So while that room may store 800 cubic feet of air, the amount of usable space to store items will be considerably less. Same thing on a drive.